(Oklahoma City) Some of you may wonder why a gay activist would write a story on the latest US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision (Stenberg v. Carhart) that allows invading the bodily privacy of a pregnant woman, invading the verbal privacy between her and her medical professional.

The 2003 SCOTUS decision of Lawrence v. Texas was also concerned with privacy--the privacy expected by common sense between consenting adults engaged in non-commercial sexual activity.

The keyword is privacy. Without it our human qualities of independence of action, critical thinking, right of association become strategic playthings in the political arena.

Both of these important Court decisions are about control over our adult bodies in situations of personal decision and integrity of association. This avarice for control has emanated for generations from fundamentalist religious sects which relish voyeuristic power over others even as their own lives are charades of hypocrisy, such as Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, and most recently Ted Haggard.

Political power brokers, incestuous cousins of fundies, are nose to nose in this race to the bottom of human endeavor. Can we forget right-wing politicians such Newt Gingrich, Orin Hatch, Dennis Hastert, who delighted in prosecuting Bill Clinton in the Congress even as their own peccadilloes with women not their wives were being exposed?

Some states are continuing to set up entrapment situations in order to arrest men under the now-invalidated sodomy laws overturned by Lawrence. The Commonwealth of Virginia didn't get the fax and still threatens arrests. Oklahoma City police arrested in 2006 Rev. Lonnie Latham of Tulsa, a fundie firebrand who fomented against gay marriage while cruising for non-commercial sex. A county judge dismissed the charges.

But many fundies and far-right politicians are still salivating like a hot canine in summer for the skins of as many gay men as can be found in order to deny them the inherent right of privacy.

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SCOTUS is a very different court from the one that decided Roe v. Wade over thirty years ago and the Stenberg decision is a hair's breadth away from overturning Roe.

The 2003 Court is likewise already very different in the four years since Lawrence was handed down, having as it now does two Bush appointments, giving it a Catholic majority.